The Harrowing Of Hell - Dialectic And Spectacle Essays -

The Harrowing of Hell - Dialectic and Spectacle Roland Barthes's essay on "The World of Wrestling" draws analogically on the ancient theatre to contextualize wrestling as a cultural myth where the grandiloquence of the ancient is preserved and the spectacle of excess is displayed. Barthes's critique -- which is above all a rewriting of what was to understand what is -- is useful here insofar as it may be applied back to theatre as another open-air spectacle. But in this case, not the theatre of the ancients, but the Middle English pageant presents the locus for discussing the sport of presentation, or, if you prefer, the performance of the sport. More specifically, what we see by looking at the Harrowing of Hell -- the dramatic moment in the cycle plays that narratizes doctrinal redemption more graphically than any other play in the cycle -- as spectacle offers a matrix for the multiple relationships between performance and audience and the means of producing that performance which, in turn, necessarily produces the audience. The implications of the spectacle could sensibly be applied to the complete texts of the cycle plays, and perhaps more appropriately to the full range of the pageant and its concomitant festivities. The direction of pseudo-historical criticism, especially of the Elizabethan stage, certainly provides a well-plowed ground for advancing the festive and carnivalesque inherently present in the establishment and event of theater. Nevertheless, my discussion here is both more limited and more expansive: its limits are constructed by the choice of an individual play recurrent through the four extant manuscripts of what has come to be called the Corpus Christi plays; its expansion is expressed through a delivery that aims to implicate the particular moment of this play in the operations of a dominant church-state apparatus, which is, ostensibly, a model of maintaining hegemony in Western culture. The Harrowing provides a singular instance in which the mechanisms of control of the apparatus ap pear to extend and exploit their relationship with the audience (i.e. congregation). The play is constructed beyond the canonized operations of the sacred, originating a narrative beyond (yet within) the authorized vulgate; it is constructed only through church authority yet maintains the divinely instituted force of the orthodox doctrine. Two introductory instances, one from the Chester cycle and the other from the Towneley cycle, situate the narrative and event of the play as a spectacle which engages the possibility of being consumed by its historical and particular mass culture -- a culture which was primarily illiterate in both the official and the vernacular writings of the church -- and being understood within the hegemonic orthodoxy. The introductory speech in the Chester Plays (The Cooke's Play) describes a previous knowledge that Adam -- as representative for a fallen humanity -- apprehends exactly at the moment he articulates his speech: Nowe, by this light that I nowe see, joye ys come, lord, through thee, and one thy people hast pittye to put them out of payne. Similarly, though now through Jesus's self-proclamation, the introduction in the Towneley cycle reveals the already known nature of its narrative: A light will thay haue To know I will com sone; My body shall abyde in gaue Till all this dede be done. The doubled "nowe" of Adam's speech and the perfected futurity of Jesus's speech dictate a time before narrative. By expressing the nature of narrative to be known and that the outcome of the particular battle -- which is hardly a battle -- between Satan and Jesus is already determined, both Adam's and Jesus's speeches establish a code for participating in the festival. The audience is relegated within this code beyond the activity of interpretation; they are placed outside of the hermeneutic circle. Instead of calling for interpretation, the play calls for consumption, which means, in this case, to view the spectacle. The public then is subordinated to its own activity of visualization -- its own sense of perception -- to gain access to the operations of the festival. At this point of subordination to the visual, the audience's motives, according to Barthes's description of the effects of the spectacle, are extinguished: The public is completely uninterested in knowing whether the contest is rigged or not, and rightly

History of Matches - Inventors and Methods

History of Matches - Inventors and Methods If you need to start a fire do you rub sticks together or break out your handy flint? Probably not. Most people would use a lighter or a match to start a fire. Matches allow for a portable, easy-to-use source of fire. Many chemical reactions generate heat and fire, but matches are a fairly recent invention. Matches are also an invention you probably wouldnt choose to duplicate if civilization ended today or you were stranded on a desert island. The chemicals involved in modern matches are generally safe, but that wasnt always the case: 1669 [Hennig Brand or Brandt, also known as Dr. Teutonicus] Brand was an Hamburg alchemist who discovered phosphorus during his attempts to turn base metals into gold. He allowed a vat of urine to stand until it putrified. He boiled the resulting liquid down to a paste, which he heated to a high temperature, so that the vapors could be drawn into water and condensed into... gold. Brand didnt get gold, but he did obtain a waxy white substance that glowed in the dark. This was phosphorus, one of the first elements to be isolated other than those which exist free in nature. Evaporating urine produced ammonium sodium hydrogenphosphate (microcosmic salt), which yielded sodium phosphite upon heating. When heated with carbon (charcoal) this decomposed into white phosphorus and sodium pyrophosphate:(NH4)NaHPO4 - †º NaPO3 NH3 H2O8NaPO3 10C - †º 2Na4P2O7 10CO P4Although Brand tried to keep his process a secret, he sold his discovery to a German chemist, Krafft, who exhibited phosphorus throughout Europe. Word leaked out that the substanc e was made from urine, which was all Kunckel and Boyle needed to work out their own means of purifying phosphorus. 1678 [Johann Kunckel]Knuckel successfully made phosphorus from urine. 1680 [Robert Boyle] Sir Robert  Boyle coated a piece of paper with phosphorus, with a separate splinter of sulfur-coated wood. When the wood was drawn through the paper, it would burst into flame. Phosphorus was difficult to obtain at that time, so the invention was only a curiosity. Boyles method of isolating phosphorus was more efficient than Brands: 4NaPO3 2SiO2 10C - †º 2Na2SiO3 10CO P4 1826/1827 [John Walker, Samuel Jones] Walker serendipitously discovered a friction match made from antimony sulfide, potassium chlorate, gum, and starch, resulting from a dried blob on the end of a stick used to stir a chemical mixture. He didnt patent his discovery, though he did show it to people. Samuel Jones saw the demonstration and started to produce Lucifers, which were matches marketed to the Southern and Western U.S. states. Lucifers reportedly could ignite explosively, sometimes throwing sparks at a considerable distance. They were known to have a strong firework odor. 1830 [Charles Sauria] Sauria reformulated the match using white phosphorus, which eliminated the strong odor. However, the phosphorus was deadly. Many people developed a disorder known as phossy jaw. Children who sucked on matches developed skeletal deformities. Phosphorus factory workers got bones diseases. One pack of matches contained enough phosphorus to kill a person. 1892 [Joshua Pusey] Pusey invented the matchbook, however, he placed the striking surface on the inside of the book so that all 50 matches would ignite at once. The Diamond Match Company later purchased Puseys patent and moved the striking surface to the exterior of the packaging. 1910 [Diamond Match Company] With a worldwide push to ban the use of white phosphorus matches, the Diamond Match Company got a patent for a non-poisonous match which used sesquisulfide of phophorus. U.S. President Taft requested that Diamond Match give up their patent. 1911 [Diamond Match Company] Diamond yielded their patent on January 28, 1911. Congress passed a law placing a prohibitively high tax on white phosphorus matches. Present Day Butane lighters have largely replaced matches in many part of the world, however matches are still made and used. The Diamond Match Company, for example, makes more than 12 billion matches a year. Approximately 500 billion matches are used annually in the United States. An alternative to chemical matches is fire steel. Fire steel uses a striker and magnesium metal to produce sparks which may be used to start a fire.